Logitech Wireless Illuminated Keyboard K800 Review

We admit it: When it comes to aftermarket PC gear, we can be major suckers for pretty lights. So when Logitech’s Wireless Illuminated Keyboard K800 visited our offices, several Computer Shopper editors volunteered to put it through its paces. The editor in chief won—not because he pulled rank, but because he bought this keyboard’s wired predecessor, the Logitech Illuminated Keyboard, on Black Friday 2009 (for just $29.99) and was using it as his everyday typer at home.

What he quickly learned: Apart from its wireless feature, this new model doesn’t differ a whole bunch from its wired brother—a good thing, because it's a very solid keyboard in its own right. The K800 is smartly laid-out and comfortable to use, but considering that the wired version sold for as much as $35 less at the time of this review, that model is a better value unless you definitely need the K800’s wireless functionality, such as in a home-theater-PC environment.

The K800 can stand on edge for easy stowing on your desk when not in use.

Features

The Wireless Illuminated Keyboard K800 uses 2.4GHz radio-frequency (RF) technology to communicate with your PC, which we much prefer to fussier Bluetooth wireless hookups. The receiver module is a compact USB receiver that protrudes from a USB port by only about a quarter of an inch; these so-called “nano receivers” are increasingly common with today’s input devices. The difference here, though: The receiver supports Logitech’s Unifying technology, which allows any other Logitech input device within range that uses Unifying to connect over the same USB receiver. That’s an advantage over other vendors’ input devices, because most require a discrete receiver (and therefore, an extra USB port) for each device. Indeed, most recent input devices are keyed single-device to single-receiver, and if you lose the receiver, the device is useless. Not so here. (Note that configuring the Unifying function requires the download of a Unifying utility from Logitech’s site.)

As the name says, this keyboard is wireless, which raises the question of its power source. The K800 uses two rechargeable AA nickel metal-hydride (NiMH) cells that juice back up in 3 to 5 hours when connected to your PC via a USB cable. You can still use the keyboard while it’s USB-tethered for charging; a $10 wall-charger option is also offered direct from Logitech's support site. Our only quibble with this arrangement is that the battery hatch is secured by a small Phillips screw, so an impromptu battery change, if you want to drop in disposables in a pinch, requires some screwdriver jockeying. On the upside, when the rechargeables fail to hold a charge months or years down the road (as is inevitable), you can swap in new ones.

The K800 in full-glow mode.

While on the subject of power, also consider that the keyboard’s backlighting is an extra power draw—and the reason wireless connections and key backlighting aren’t typically seen together. To Logitech’s credit, it built in a couple of smart power-conservation features aimed at minimizing the lighting’s impact.

From left to right: The K800's ambient-light sensor, battery gauge, and power switch.

First, the keyboard has an ambient-light sensor that automatically adjusts the strength of the backlighting according to the room lighting. (The sensor is located on the upper right of the keyboard’s body; it’s a small, semi-transparent dot.) You can also manually adjust the brightness of the key illumination via the Fn and F5/F6 keys, in increments of 25, 50, 75, and 100 percent. Second, the keyboard has a motion sensor that turns the key illumination on or off as you bring your hands near the keys. It’s almost spookily sensitive.

The power-saving technologies appear to work well. Logitech claims 10 days of battery life on a single charge of the K800. Your mileage will vary based on your usage patterns, of course, but we weren’t able to drain it over the course of six days, using the keyboard for three to four hours a day.

One further nice design touch: The K800, viewed end-on, has a wedge shape that allows you to stand the keyboard on its rear edge when it’s not in use. This is handy if you need to clear your desk quickly when your PC is not in use—you can just flip the keyboard up and out of the way. We didn’t find it overly stable in vertical orientation, but it beats having to find a place for the K800 when you need working space.

Key layout & feel

Key feel is always a matter of taste, but we can resolutely say that this is not a keyboard for fans of highly clicky, deep-press keys. There’s muted clickiness and only a little tactile feedback, and the overall feel is flat and shallow, closer to that of a good laptop keyboard than an old-school desktop one. Indeed, the whole feel is a bit flat with the keyboard lying flush to the desk, and flipping down the two sturdy tilt-up feet on the underside doesn’t elevate the keyboard a whole lot.

The full K800 layout. Note the half-size function keys.

The tops of the keys are slightly concave, with the intent of guiding your fingers to the keys’ centers when you mis-strike. We didn’t note any increased accuracy because of this, but we didn’t mind the curvature. Some, though, may find that the slightly “bubbly” look of the keys and the rather plain and curvy font used to label them gives the keys a slightly toy-like air.

The keytops on the K800 are curved, with a slightly toy-like look.

Whatever our feeling on the look of the keytops, we did appreciate the intelligent key layout, which allows for a full numeric keypad, an isolated, T-shaped arrow-key cluster with full-size keys (a deal breaker for us, if not present), and all of the ancillary keys in predictable places. The function keys have been reduced to half-size vertically, a head-scratching design decision seeing as the strip of empty bezel above them could have accommodated full-size keys. We think the half-height function keys are workable, though; when you’re looking to press a function key, you’re usually in hunt-and-peck mode, anyway.

The function keys work as normal F1 to F12 keys if you press them by themselves, and when combined with the Fn key, you can access secondary actions such as browser/e-mail launch functions, as well as media-file playback. Also possible via Fn-key combinations: adjusting the key backlighting (as mentioned earlier), powering down the PC, and lighting up the onboard battery meter (a three-stage LED scale), situated between the ambient-light sensor and the keyboard’s on/off switch. To the right of the function-key row, you do get dedicated keys for volume control/mute and launching Windows’ calculator app.

You can tweak key functionality beyond the standard functions using Logitech’s SetPoint software. A familiar utility that traditionally came bundled with Logitech input devices on a CD-ROM, SetPoint is now an optional download from Logitech’s site. With SetPoint installed, you can customize what the function keys do, as well as disable certain keys or tweak how the illumination works. (This Logitech primer explains how to make full use of SetPoint.)

Conclusion

Overall, we found little fault, physically, with the K800. Of course, key feel and spacing are both highly personal preferences, but we think both aspects strike a reasonable middle ground in the K800 for most users. One thing we can say with confidence, though: This keyboard does cost a premium for, mostly, just the fact that it’s wireless. Most of the innovation in the K800 revolves around the motion-detection and power-saving features needed to conserve the rechargeable battery of an illuminated keyboard. As noted, we picked up the wired version of the Logitech Illuminated Keyboard on Black Friday 2009 for $29.95, and at the time we wrote this it sold widely for $50 to $60. (Click to see the latest pricing on the wired Logitech Illuminated Keyboard.)

The most common scenario in which we’ve seen the need for a wireless keyboard is with a home-theater PC, and for this purpose the K800 has some appeal; the lighting comes in handy in a darkened living room. But the lack of an integrated pointing device limits its usefulness from the couch, and the keyboard is full-size, not a compact model like the Microsoft Arc Keyboard, making it gawky to use on your lap.

Our final takeaway: The Wireless Illuminated Keyboard K800 is a sound and attractive keyboard in its own right, but unless you have a strong practical or aesthetic need for the wireless, the wired version is a better value. Still, we’d settle for either of them on sale.

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